


Look Away

by ratbasturd



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Anxiety, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 02:37:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21046913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratbasturd/pseuds/ratbasturd
Summary: If you spend enough time living someone else's life, you might lose a little of yourself along the way.





	Look Away

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a little piece that came to my head, it doesn't really have any particular direction

“Go to college,” they said.

“It will be fun,” they said.

…

“You can just take out loans,” they said.

Big mistake.

College was not fun. Loans put him in an irreversible debt. He was stuck with a meaningless degree. Nobody had warned him that in order to make a livable wage in life, you couldn’t get a degree in what you _ wanted_, but rather in whatever field was most rapidly evolving. So there he stood at the metaphorical gates of Hyperion on their most advanced space station in an office overlooking the Hub of Heroism, his naturally heterochromatic eyes scanning the sea of bustling workers for anyone that could set him free from this hell. But who was he kidding? 

No one could set him free.

Nobody but time. Three more years, seven months, fourteen days, and… He looked at his watch. ...one hour, to be precise.

He signed his life away to a lowly Hyperion programmer that was somehow wealthy enough to pay off someone else’s student loans; but Timothy could hardly call this a job. It was indentured servitude with a fancy title. He worked for Jack, who had managed to kill his way to CEO status. Anything he needed, he got from Timmy or another doppelganger—but Timmy seemed to be his favorite. He had no idea why. They all looked the same, acted the same, and sounded the same, but of course nobody could be a more perfect Jack than the man himself—except maybe Timothy Lawrence, despite the fact that he despised killing.

But Jack made him sick.

The man was a murderous, psychopathic narcissist who—even as a programmer—had thought so highly of himself, he preyed on desperate fools that were willing to surgically alter their faces and voices to be just like him for a good paycheck. Worse than that? Jack believed they loved it.

Timmy didn’t. He wanted his ginger hair, his cute little freckles… or any semblance of normalcy at all.

He saw two fingers snap in front of his face, pulling him out of his trance. “Pandora to other-me,” he heard, whipping his head around to find the man he worked for tapping his foot impatiently. “Did you hear a word I said, Pumpkin, or are you just a pretty face and a walnut-sized brain?”

“S-Sorry, Sir,” Timmy stammered. Despite working for the man for so long, he could never get over the fear of his employer. Though he figured it was, at the very least, a justifiable fear. Jack could shoot him right then and there and nobody would miss him. They could just airlock his body and it would be like he never existed in the first pl- “Could you repeat that?”

“I _ said_,” Jack started, his words laced with venom and an intolerable impatience, “Get packing for a month’s worth of supervisory work. You’re heading down to the mines. You know how I like them run. Fuck it up, Cupcake, and you’re a dead man. You _ know _ how many people could take your place.” With that threat, Timmy gave a quick nod and left the room. He made his way to his crew quarters where he packed enough for over a month, but really, it was the same four outfits that were Jack-issued and approved. _ Look like him, sound like him, act like him. Look like him, sound like him, act like him. Look like- _

Pandora. Or as Jack liked to call it, a “nacho-flavored shithole of a planet”. The majority of the planet was desolate wastelands—either desert or frozen. It was your choice which you wanted to die in. Find a tree and you should consider yourself lucky. The planet was barren from an ecological standpoint with very few forests or jungle environments. The most diversity found in nature would come from the variety of elemental flavors the wildlife could come in. No matter the flavor, however, all of the wildlife was deadly and would kill anyone that came close to their territory. 

Not to mention the _ bandits_. Timmy shuddered at the thought of running into any. The only thing worse than having one’s face mauled by a fire skag was a psycho using your face for a skin pizza party. 

The ride to Pandora wasn’t unpleasant; the views of the planet and its moon were beautiful sights to behold from space, but as the ship neared its destination, his anxiety began to resurface.

_ Tick. Tick. Tick. _

He could hear his watch. 

_ Tick. _

It felt so loud in comparison to everything else.

Focus, Timmy.

_ Tick. _

“We begin descent in five minutes.” He heard a female voice over the speaker. Her voice was almost calming, but it was nothing more than a robot.

_ Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. _

His hand clamped over the watch suddenly, quieting the noise. It normally didn’t bother him, he rather liked the monotonous ticking, but not when everything he felt was heightened by fear, adrenaline, and anxiety. Still, his breathing was calm. He had been to Pandora before—it was never as bad as people made it out to be—but it didn’t stop the thoughts of skin pizza parties and wild psychos from drifting to the forefront of his brain. It didn’t stop the incessant “what ifs”. _ What if _ someone found out he wasn’t Jack? _ What if _ they believed he was Jack, and that gave them more reason to kill him? _ What if- _

“We have arrived. Please unfasten your seatbelt and exit the ship. Thank you, and remember: Handsome Jack says you’re expendable. Don’t waste your bullets.”

Timmy did as he was told and grabbed his suitcase, ignoring the last part of the message as he exited the ship. When he stepped off, he felt the hot Pandoran sun beating down on him. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes. Desert. Harsh, hot desert sands were all that greeted him. 

After the ship ascended into the sky again, he looked behind him to find a Hyperion-issued car with a driver sitting in the front seat. The window closest to him rolled down and the driver peered over his sunglasses. 

“Good to see you’ve arrived in one piece, Sir,” the driver said. Timmy took note of the impatient tapping of the steering wheel, but the rather friendly smile the driver maintained. If he hadn’t known better, he almost would’ve believed that it was real. _ Almost. _

“Good to see your mom’s still a whore. Had her up on Helios last night,” Timmy retorted as he got into the back, not bothering to pick up his own suitcase. The driver took care of that. The words he had spoken were of something Jack would say, but all _ he _ wanted to do was apologize, give the man a nice greeting, and ask him how his day was going. He felt dead inside being so rude to someone who had done nothing to him.

He heard the man grumble, but not bother to respond otherwise. Nobody ever dared to; that was the effect Jack had on people. The drive to the mines was silent. Awkward and silent.

*

“_Who _ recalibrated _ my goddamn mines_?” Timmy yelled at the workers. He had to keep himself from wincing when he saw the fear in their eyes and the way they stepped away from him, as if he was a monster.

_ I’m sorry, I don’t like this any more than you do. _

He whipped out his gun and aimed it at the closest worker. “I _ said_, who did it? _ Someone _ here did, and it sure as hell wasn’t me! Whatever moron decided that recalibrating the system was necessary, you fucked up. Big. Time. Now we’re mining useless fucking _ rocks _ instead of my _ goddamn eridium! _” This time his tone was louder, firmer. He sounded crazed, just like Jack did. 

_ Please, someone, please speak up. Anyone. _

Nobody spoke up. Jack would have made a point of this.

** _BANG!_ **

A shot rang out through the mine. Timmy kept his eyes shut, but pinched the bridge of his nose in faux annoyance like his employer would have. He just didn’t want to look at the lifeless body he knew was in front of him.

_ I’m so sorry. _

“I will give you numbskulls one more chance to come forward. Who fucked up my _ priceless _mine?” His eyes were open now, glaring around at the group of people. They all looked horrified—most had their eyes trained on the dead body. He couldn’t look.

He cocked his gun again. It took everything in him to swallow the bile that had risen.

_ Don’t make me do this. I’m begging you. Someone please come forward. _

A young male stepped forward, covered in dust and dirt. He looked sickly. 

“I-I’m sorry, Mr. Jack, Sir. It was- It was just a mistake, I promise!”

Timmy rolled his eyes, but only so he didn’t have to look directly at him. He couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen.

** _BANG!_ **

The noise the body made when it slumped to the floor made him physically ill.

_ It’s what Jack would have done. It’s what Jack would have done. It’s what Jack would have done. I had to do it. I had no choice. I have to be Jack. _

“All of you, get out of my fucking sight! Do your fucking jobs!” He roared. He needed to escape before they saw his weakness and found _ Jack _ to be weak. That would have ensured his own death very quickly. He stormed away back to his- well, _ Jack’s _office built to oversee the mines. When he stepped inside, locked the door, and shut the blinds, he broke down into a sob. His stomach churned.

“I am not Handsome Jack,” he told himself, as if needing to convince his own brain. “My name is Timothy Lawrence. I have ginger hair and freckles that pop in the summer after I’ve been in the sun.” His body shook with every wave of sickness that passed. “I love the fall weather and warm turtleneck sweaters. I used to have a dog named Dino and a cat named Binx. I am not Handsome Jack.”


End file.
